Ask any medical or public-health expert what America should do about the threat of AIDS, and the answer is likely to be the same: mount a massive education campaign and seek to persuade people to avoid the behavior that would put them or their sexual partners at risk of contracting the disease. Yet ask someone who disapproves of homosexuality and drug addiction, and the answer will probably be quite different: AIDS is a disease that strikes the sinful and their consorts. In this view, the appropriate public policy would be to identify infected persons and, if necessary, isolate them from healthy people.

According to a Gallup Poll last summer, 42 percent of the people surveyed said they “sometimes think that AIDS is a punishment for the decline in moral standards.” Yet an almost equal number (43 percent) said they didn't have such thoughts.

As the country is divided, so are policy makers who are determining the nature and scope of public education and prevention programs. That division—already evident in Congress, where a battle over AIDS legislation is shaping up is symbolized by the gulf that separates Surgeon General C. Everett Koop and Secretary of Education William J. Bennett.